Page 25 of Cursed Shadows 5

I look anywhere but at Dare’s single golden eye, or the other eye, ridged and ruined, slick with brownish ointment.

“Samick has always felt on the outside. Even among the dark fae, he is different. He is of ice.”

I make a face at the wall. “What does thatmean?”

“It means he is not dark fae, not really, not in blood.”

I lift my crumpled look to him, an unspoken question.

He is quiet for a moment before, “Samick is from Ísabroch. It’s an isle off the mainland. The Ice Court. There, the fae are…” He sighs and aims an apologetic look at me, “different.”

My nod is slow.

The only consistent way I have heard Samick described by anyone who dares speak of it at all.Different.

“Is it another race of fae?” I ask, and my mind flickers between woodland fae, dark fae, light fae—and one we have not yet learned of in Licht, a breed hidden on an isle, shrouded in darkness, far beyond our reach and knowledge.

“It is. Once, before the isle of became a court of Dorcha, the fae there were calledthe ones of ice. That is what Samick is. He was born there, in the mountains of ice and mist, where the sun never sets, but is always hidden behind the clouds, and the winter never leaves… A place like the Mountain of Slumber.”

Harsh.

A harsh life in a harsh environment.

“Why did he leave?” I ask, though I too would flee such a place.

“His parents are gone.” Dare shoots me a side glance. “Before you pry any further, no—I do not know what happened to them. All I know is that Samick was displaced as a youngling and was taken in by a dark fae couple. He was raised in the home next to Hemlock House.”

“The home… in Kithe?” The frown I fix on him is dubious, slow. “Next to Hemlock House?”

Dare’s mouth tightens.

He watches me, his eye flickering over my face, as I put it together.

“The home Kalice is in?”

His nod is not just slow, it is grave. “Samick’s differences make even his peers uneasy. At the barracks, most avoided him. But he has heart—and Kalice is an example of that heart, and why he has it covered in ice, as you say.”

“I…” My mouth parts, then shuts, parts, then shuts, until I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

“Kalice and her brother,” Dare starts, his one-eyed stare levelled with my stupid one, “stumbled through a bridge between the realms—and the wrong fae were on the other side. She was only six years old.” He gestures with a wave of his hand to his body, hisarmour. “I doubt you have seen her without a cloak or a shawl covering her, since she wears the scars of missing flesh and bites all over her body.”

I pale and lean my weight onto one boot, a leaning retreat—as though it will take me away from that horrible thought.

Unease has my gaze shifting to the wall that closes the alley, where smears of dirt are caked into the grooves, and to the opening where the lane cuts past, and the only sound comes from the rodents that dig through the waste.

“We were fresh out of the barracks, and we all got home visits,” Dare tells me. “Samick was travelling to Aiteal to visit me when he heard their screams. He slaughtered the fae to save them.”

The corners of my mouth are turned down. “I always thought… He and Kalice, I…”

“I know what you assumed,” Dare says. “We all did. And we chose to let you assume wrong.”

“Why?”

“We do not speak of it.”

“Why not? Why do they not speak if he saved her? Where is the boy, the brother? Why is she and her family inhishome?”

“Thatishis family.” Dare holds my gaze. “Kalice stole it from him.”

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